If I Go Wrong, You Will Correct Me. The Seven Heresies of "Amoris Laetitia"

“Most Holy Father, With profound grief, but moved by fidelity to our Lord Jesus Christ, by love for the Church and for the papacy, and by filial devotion toward yourself, we are compelled to address a correction to Your Holiness on account of the propagation of heresies effected by the apostolic exhortation ‘Amoris Laetiti’ and by other words, deeds and omissions of Your Holiness.”

So begins the letter that 40 Catholic scholars from all over the world sent to Pope Francis last August 11 and are making public today, Sunday September 24, on the site www.correctiofilialis.org

The 40 signers have in the meantime become 62, and others could be added. But so far Francis has shown no sign of having taken their step into consideration.

A step that has no equal in the modern history of the Church. Because one has to go all the way back to 1333 to find the last analogous precedent, meaning a public “correction” addressed to the pope for heresies that were upheld and then in fact rejected by the pope at the time, John XXII.

The heresies denounced by the signers of the letter are seven. And they are all contained implicitly, in their judgment, in the eighth chapter of the apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia,” the crucial passages of which they present.

But not only there. The letter also lists a series of successive words, acts, and omissions with which Pope Francis is alleged to have further propagated those same heresies. Thereby giving “scandal to the Church and to the world.”

Which led to the decision not only to denounce this state of affairs publicly, but also to send to Pope Francis the explicit request to correct the errors that he has “upheld and propagated, causing great and imminent danger for souls.”

The actual “correctio,” written in Latin, takes up little more than one page of the 26 of the whole letter, and is reproduced in its entirety further below, in the translations that the authors themselves have made of it.

With regard to which it must be said that, in the letter sent to the pope, the signatures are placed not at the end of the text but immediately after the “Correctio” and before the long final “Elucidation” that therefore has a value more accessory than substantial. This insists on the theological background of the heresies denounced, and identifies it in “modernism” and in the thought of Martin Luther, toward which Pope Francis - it states - indicates “an affinity without precedent.”

Among the 62 signers, listed further below, the 40 who signed the letter delivered to the pope are marked in bold.

And among the signatures that were added afterward there also appears one of a bishop, the only one. It is Bernard Fellay, superior of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, meaning the Lefebvrists.

This signature of his could in reality create more difficulties for Pope Francis than has the letter, for which he has so far made a show of indifference.

The fact that Fellay recognizes seven times Francis as propagator of heresy over makes difficult, if not impossible, that practical reconciliation which Francis himself has repeatedly demonstrated he wants to hasten with the Lefebvrists.

Getting back to the first 40 signers, among them are two of the six lay scholars who gathered in Rome last April 22 for the study seminar on “Amoris Laetitia” remembered by Carlo Caffarra in his last - and unheeded - letter to Pope Francis.

The two are Claudio Pierantoni, professor of philosophy at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, and Anna M. Silvas, Australian, a specialist on the Fathers of the Church and a professor at the University of New England.

For Pierantoni, Settimo Cielo published on September 14 a commentary that ended as follows:

“It is all the more necessary and urgent that some kind of ‘formal’, or, maybe better, '’filial’ correction to the Pope, finally appear. And may God grant the Holy Father an open heart to hear it.”

While Anna Silvas is remembered for having stated at the seminar on April 22 that she was skeptical about Pope Francis’s willingness to receive a “correction.”

Instead, she proposed for the current post-Christian era a “Benedict option,” inspired by the monasticism at the collapse of the ancient era, a humble and communal “dwelling” with Jesus and the Father (John 14:23) in trustful anticipation, made up of prayer and work, for the tempest shaking the world and the Church today to cease.

___________

CORRECTIO

By words, deeds, and omissions, and by passages of the document 'Amoris
laetitia,' Your Holiness has upheld, directly or indirectly, and, with what degree of awareness we do not seek to judge, both by public office and by private act propagated in the Churchthe following false and heretical propositions:

1. "A justified person has not the strength with God’s grace to carry out the objective demands of the divine law, as though any of the commandments of God are impossible for the justified; or as meaning that God’s grace, when it produces justification in an individual, does not invariably and of its nature produce conversion from all serious sin, or is not sufficient for conversion from all serious sin."

2. "Christians who have obtained a civil divorce from the spouse to whom they are validly married and have contracted a civil marriage with some other person during the lifetime of their spouse, who live 'more uxorio' with their civil partner, and who choose to remain in this state with full knowledge of the nature of their act and full consent of the will to that act, are not necessarily in a state of mortal sin, and can receive sanctifying grace and grow in charity."

3. "A Christian believer can have full knowledge of a divine law and voluntarily choose to break it in a serious matter, but not be in a state of mortal sin as a result of this action."

4. "A person is able, while he obeys a divine prohibition, to sin against God by that very act of obedience."

5. "Conscience can truly and rightly judge that sexual acts between persons who have contracted a civil marriage with each other, although one or both of them is sacramentally married to another person, can sometimes be morally right or requested or even commanded by God."

6. "Moral principles and moral truths contained in divine revelation and in the natural law do not include negative prohibitions that absolutely forbid particular kinds of action, inasmuch as these are always gravely unlawful on account of their object."

7. "Our Lord Jesus Christ wills that the Church abandon her perennial discipline of refusing the Eucharist to the divorced and remarried and of refusing absolution to the divorced and remarried who do not express contrition for their state of life and a firm purpose of amendment with regard to it."

These propositions all contradict truths that are divinely revealed, and that Catholics must believe with the assent of divine faith. […] It is necessary for the good of souls that they be once more condemned by the authority of the Church. In listing these seven propositions we do not intend to give an exhaustive list of all the heresies and errors which an unbiased reader, attempting to read 'Amoris laetitia' in its natural and obvious sense, would plausibly take to be affirmed, suggested or favoured by this document. Rather, we seek to list the propositions which Your Holiness's words, deeds and omissions have in effect upheld and propagated, to the great and imminent danger of souls.

At this critical hour, therefore, we turn to the "cathedra veritatis," the Roman Church, which has by divine law pre-eminence over all the churches, and of which we are and intend always to remain loyal children, and we respectfully insist that Your Holiness publicly reject these propositions, thus accomplishing the mandate of our Lord Jesus Christ given to St Peter and through him to all his successors until the end of the world: "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren."

We respectfully ask for Your Holiness’s apostolic blessing, with the assurance of our filial devotion in our Lord and of our prayer for the welfare of the Church.

*

(In bold are the names of the first 40 signers, those of the letter delivered to the pope on August 11. The name of one of these has been omitted at the signer's own request.)

Salvatore J. Ciresi, M.A.
Director of the St. Jerome Biblical Guild, Lecturer at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College

Fr. Linus F Clovis
Director of the Secretariat for Family and Life in the Archdiocese of Castries

Fr Paul Cocard
Religious

Fr Thomas Crean OP STD

Prof. Matteo D'Amico
Professor of History and Philosophy, Senior High School of Ancona

Dr. Chiara Dolce PhD
Research doctor in Moral Philosophy at the University of Cagliari

Nick Donnelly MA
Deacon

Petr Dvorak
Head of Department for the Study of Ancient and Medieval Thought at the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague; Professor of philosophy at Saints Cyril and Methodius Theological Faculty, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic

H.E. Mgr Bernard Fellay
Superior General of the SSPX

Christopher Ferrara Esq.
Founding President of the American Catholic Lawyers’ Association

Prof. Michele Gaslini
Professor of Public Law at the University of Udine

Prof. Massimo de Leonardis
Professor and Director of the Department of Political Sciences at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan
Msgr. Prof. Antonio Livi
Academic of the Holy See, Dean emeritus of the Pontifical Lateran University , Vice-rector of the church of Sant'Andrea del Vignola, Rome

Dr. Carlo Manetti
Professor in Private Universities in Italy

Prof. Pietro De Marco
Former Professor at the University of Florence
Prof. Roberto de Mattei
Former Professor of the History of Christianity, European University of Rome, former Vice President of the National Research Council (CNR)

Fr Cor Mennen
Lecturer in Canon Law at the Major Seminary of the Diocese of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Netherlands). Canon of the cathedral chapter of the diocese of ‘s-Hertogenbosch
Prof. Stéphane Mercier
Lecturer in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain

Don Alfredo Morselli STL
Parish priest of the archdiocese of Bologna

Martin Mosebach
Writer and essayist

Dr. Claude E. Newbury
Former Director of Human Life International in Africa south of the Sahara; former Member of the Human Services Commission of the Catholic Bishops of South Africa

Fr Guy Pagès
Diocesan Priest
Prof. Paolo Pasqualucci
Professor of Philosophy (retired), University of Perugia
Prof. Claudio Pierantoni
Professor of Medieval Philosophy in the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Chile; Former Professor of Church History and Patrology at the Faculty of Theology of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Father Anthony Pillari, J.C.L., M.C.L

Prof. Enrico Maria Radaelli
Philosopher, editor of the works of Romano Amerio
Dr. John Rao
Associate Professor of History, St. John’s University, NYC; Chairman, Roman Forum
Dr. Carlo Regazzoni
Licentiate in Philosophy at University of Freiburg
Dr. Giuseppe Reguzzoni
External Researcher at the Catholic University of Milan and former editorial assistant of Communio, International Catholic Review (Italian edition)

Prof. Arkadiusz Robaczewski
Former Professor at the Catholic University of Lublin

Fr Settimio M. Sancioni STD
Licence in Biblical Science

Prof. Andrea Sandri
Research Associate, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan